She ran with shoes in hand. Her silk stockings padded against the gold flecked floor. This place was too beautiful for her. Too full of life for a dead girl. 

Her dress had been beautiful too, until she wore it. The padding of her feet increased. 

Away, away. She had to get out, get far from this place she didn’t deserve. 

She ran into a room. Her shoes fell from her fingers and tears slid from her face and she didn't know what she was doing and then the gun was in her hand and her fingers traced the cold trigger. 

A scream filled her mind and she couldn’t remember the way it felt to be not empty. 

She fled from her self, from the darkness within her that had always existed, that had surfaced until she couldn't remember anything but the blackness. The hot water splattered her back as she yanked the faucet. Her gown clung to her sides. Her makeup melded into paint smears. Her hair dribbled. She pressed herself against the tile, trying desperately to mold herself into it’s jejune symmetry. 

Her eyelids fought back against the spring of tears that threatened to overwhelm her. 

It ached to be alive. 

She sank to the floor, the shower water still spraying her. Her knees came to her chest, and she rocked herself again and again.

 

He stood in the doorway, looking down at her. His marble face had cracked somehow, cracked and split until his eyes were full of sadness and pity. He had never looked like that at anyone. She would know. She had memorized his cheekbones, his eyes, the veins of his hands as they stood, raised through his tanned skin. 

She couldn’t stand. Couldn’t speak. 

She just sat. She felt his heavy eyes upon her. His suit was immaculate. He looked alive. Everything she wasn’t. 

He steeped closer. 

Another step. 

She watched him blankly. 

He stepped into the water. It ran down his suit, and his hair and his shoes. 

He sat beside her. He drew his knees up to his chest. They sat in a symmetrical silence. 

His voice was velvet ribbon. 

“I think I like you now more than I ever have before.” 

She was broken. Robbed. Empty. 

He kissed her wet lips with his smooth ones. 

And she melted into something not quite herself. 

Something beautiful and broken. 

But something.